Mountains to Mouths: Development of the Bay Area's Water Supply

About the 2007 Calendar

The images illustrated in Mountains to Mouths represent the historic developement of water supply of the San Francisco Bay
Area.

San Francisco and the East Bay are home to a few dozen freshwater creeks that historically have provided enough water for
the Bay Area’s indigenous peoples. By the beginning of the 1900s, however, the burgeoning population demanded more
water than local creeks could supply. Cities called on structural and civil engineers to build far-reaching delivery systems
to distribute water to the new denizens. The images presented here depict San Francisco and the East Bay’s water
infrastructure development during the twentieth century, revealing the complex planning and large-scale construction projects
necessary for providing water to hundreds of Bay Area communities.

In the nineteenth century, local water delivery was handled by private companies. In 1851, San Francisco’s first
private water company was founded. The appropriately named Mountain Lake Water Company diverted water from the
Presidio’s Mountain Lake to the foot of Van Ness Avenue. By 1856, their first dam at Lobos Creek provided nearly two
million gallons of water a day to the city. On the other side of the Bay, the Contra Costa Water Company was the dominant
force in early water delivery; by the 1860s, its rudimentary dam of earth and clay brought water from Temescal Creek to small
but growing towns such as Oakland and Berkeley.

As the population of the Bay Area increased and water demand rose, water quality and reliability declined. The traditional
earthen dams brought brown, clouded water to the spigots, while frequent droughts made local water sources unreliable. City
engineers of San Francisco and the East Bay looked to the Sierra for clean and reliable sources of water. A U.S. Geological
Survey report from 1900 recommended using Hetch Hetchy Valley for San Francisco’s water supply, and after thirteen
years of political and environmental debate, San Francisco began constructing the Hetch Hetchy water delivery system. The
East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD), formed in 1923 by voters weary of inadequate and inferior water supplies, set
its sights farther north than San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy system, diverting water from the Mokelumne River and sewing
the Pardee Dam into the landscape of the Mother Lode.

Since then, the two Bay Area water supply districts have built, expanded, and rebuilt their water delivery and wastewater
systems. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) now relies on 8 reservoirs to deliver drinking water to the
city of San Francisco. EBMUD’s intricate network of dams, reservoirs, and pipelines supplies water to more than 1.3
million residents.

Mountains to Mouths is produced jointly by UC Berkeley's Water Resources Center Archives and the Harmer E. Davis
Transportation Library and supports their exceptional collections and programs.